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Saturday, October 31, 2015

Have you ever had a book sit unread on your shelf for years and years and years for no good reason at all? If you saw my basement to be read shelves, you'd know that this is not an unusual thing for me. But when the publisher reissues it twenty years after you first bought it, sends you a new advanced copy, and you still don't get to it, that's a bit excessive. And yet, even then I didn't pick it right up, waiting through a friend's occasional gushing references and having read and enjoyed other newer books by the author for another 5 years or so. But for every book there is a season, right? And I've finally gotten to this one's. Jill McCorkle's Ferris Beach may be twenty-five years old but it easily holds up to a reading today.

Mary Katherine Burns is nine when split level homes are built across the street from her own historically significant house. Katie is an only child and generally alone so she is thrilled to discover that a girl her own age is moving in across the street. Misty and her glamorous, unconventional mother Mo are a whole different breed of people from Katie and her mother Cleva. As Katie and Misty become best friends, Katie is drawn into the intriguing life she sees being lived across from her. The only outrageous and unusual thing in her own life is Cousin Angela, the cousin who wafts in and out of the Burns' lives, disapproved of by Cleva and sometimes secretly, sometimes publicly abetted by Katie's beloved father Fred. Katie is a watchful girl and as she grows, she learns to see that the facade we present to others is just that, a facade. Her greatest desire is a more glamorous life but when something big and irreversible happens one July 4th, she sees beyond her childish romanticized view of others' lives to the turmoil and unhappiness beneath. It is a lesson she won't forget as she continues to see snatches of bald realism that alter the superficial view, especially with Merle, the boy who once tormented her, and Perry, the beautiful, victimized girl who was to marry Merle's brother.

Katie is awkward and embarrassed as only a shy girl can be. Her world is safe and circumscribed but it cannot stay that way, because life is not safe and circumscribed. Secrets have a way of being exposed, surfacing unwelcomed and unwanted; truth and honesty win out. McCorkle does the small moments, the everyday, interrupted by unusual upheaval so well. She beautifully captures the minutia that makes up our days. But she also captures the ruptures and chasms that spin us around to face another way entirely. Her characters are people we all know. The 1970s small Southern town setting is exquisitely rendered and her characters are true to the time period in both their reactions and beliefs. The malapropisms in one character's speech are hilarious, adding some poignancy but also levity to a story filled with the small and large tragedies of regular life. The pacing is slow, deliberate, and contemplative. It is a coming of age story paced at life's own measure. Like an exquisitely rendered miniature rather than a huge sweeping canvas, attention to detail is everything here. Ferris Beach is definitely more for people who enjoy and appreciate character driven stories than those who want a cracking, fast-paced plot to follow.

Amazon says this about the book: The latest novel from the bestselling author of Dollface and What the Lady Wants takes us deep into the tumultuous world of 1950s Chicago where a female journalist struggles with the heavy price of ambition...

Every second of every day, something is happening. There’s a story out there buried in the muck, and Jordan Walsh, coming from a family of esteemed reporters, wants to be the one to dig it up. But it’s 1955, and the men who dominate the city room of the Chicago Tribune have no interest in making room for a female cub reporter. Instead Jordan is relegated to society news, reporting on Marilyn Monroe sightings at the Pump Room and interviewing secretaries for the White Collar Girl column.

Even with her journalistic legacy and connections to luminaries like Mike Royko, Nelson Algren, and Ernest Hemingway, Jordan struggles to be taken seriously. Of course, that all changes the moment she establishes a secret source inside Mayor Daley’s office and gets her hands on some confidential information. Now careers and lives are hanging on Jordan’s every word. But if she succeeds in landing her stories on the front page, there’s no guarantee she’ll remain above the fold.…

Monday, October 26, 2015

Politics and religion, the two topics you should never bring up at the dinner table. It's impolite to discuss these two things because there are so many opinions, all very personal and deeply, often unconsciously, held. And arguing against or even just questioning someone else's choice is seen as confrontational or judgmental. Yet so many people these days are skeptics or searching for a spiritual fit for themselves or their families that they might in fact welcome a conversation to help them find their place. Author Alison Pick certainly needed to discuss her feelings and desires and questions after she uncovered the family secret of her paternal grandparents' shift to being publicly Canadian Christian from their beginning as Czech Jews fleeing in advance of Hitler's domination of Europe. She did ultimately have those needed conversations, documented in her emotional memoir, Between Gods, as she makes the choice to convert back to the Judaism of her beloved grandparents.

Starting with the newly posited idea that trauma and sadness can in fact be passed down genetically to descendants, Pick looks to uncover the roots of her dark and swelling depression. Her father has suffered over the years, as has her grandmother, but there's more to it than that. When she discovers the truth of her grandparents' lives, that they were Jewish and chose to leave their homeland as Hitler gained power but were forever tethered to the family members who didn't emigrate in time and died in the camps, she has found a focus or a cause for the smothering, debilitating depression she feels. In her inward searching, she starts to realize that she is incredibly drawn to many of the tenets and ideas of Judaism and in fact feels the closest kinship to those family members who are still Jewish. She's newly engaged, moved across the country, starting a new job, and writing a difficult novel when these feelings of displacement send her looking for a place of belonging and for her very identity.

She struggles as she tries to walk the searcher's path, agonizing over her feelings and carefully considering the choice she's making, its impact in her own life, and the way that her choice ripples into other loved ones' lives as well. Pick joins a conversion class in her quest to know deep down who she is. She does a lot of emotional digging and shares that with her readers. She includes bits from her therapy sessions, conversations with her fiance, her own internal musings, discussions with the Jewish acquaintances, later friends, who loom large in her life, and the painful questions and concerns from her sponsoring rabbi. Pick is honest about the road blocks she faced: the worry over converting if her fiance decided not to convert with her, her father's support of her but his own initial disinterest in the process, her hard-faced realization that Judaism is not defined by the Holocaust and how that changed her perspective, the shock that her own Jewish heritage didn't ease her way into the faith community, and her own uncertainties. Her journey to Judaism was long and not easy, in fact, the community's reluctance to embrace her solely because of her upcoming marriage to a non-Jew, their active pushing her away instead of welcoming her, was painful to witness. The struggle to become her own most authentic self was intense and her time lost "between Gods" was hard to witness but fascinating. Fans of memoir and religion, those who enjoyed Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, a very different conversion memoir than this one, and those curious about others' spiritual decisions will appreciate this well written, soul searching, readable account of Pick's deeply personal and satisfying journey.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46 edited by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood
Between Gods by Alison Pick
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Famous Baby by Karen Rizzo

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Halloween is almost upon us and if you follow any book blogs at all, this one excepted, you have probably seen a whole array of posts on scary books and the spine tingling, pulse pounding tales that others are reading. You haven't seen that here, and not just because I haven't been so very good about writing things for the blog lately. You haven't seen it because I am a coward. I do not read things that will give me nightmares. And let me tell you, I suffer from nightmares easily. Shoot, I can still have nightmares about things I read or watched (The Other by Thomas Tryon or Children of the Corn, anyone?!) when I was a young teenager ::mumble mumble:: years ago. Books don't even have to be particularly scary to have me wide awake in a panic in the middle of the night. So it's with a serious sense of self-preservation and a desire to not be up more times I should be sleeping than my bladder already insists on that I avoid mysteries, thrillers, horror, true crime, and the like. People in my various book clubs know that if there's a body or blood involved, I'm out. You mention a death in the jacket copy of a book and I start squirming before I even get through the paragraph. And yet, I do sometimes break my own rules. I have read some books that I would normally shudder before opening because one of my book clubs has chosen it: The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl (gruesome), Girl With a Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson (distastefully graphic), and Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (heart pounding in the end) to name a few. So I'm not always the group party pooper. Well, I am but sometimes I get outvoted and I try to be a good sport. This October my sad bleatings about my own personal sensitivities won the day though and we aren't reading anything spooky--we're reading The Bees by Laline Paull instead. Yay!

I can't possibly be alone in the huddled under the covers, worried about the ax murderer just outside the door club, now can I? Just in case there's anyone else out there who needs a lullaby instead of a campfire tale before bed, I thought I'd try and look back on my reading (book club choices excluded) to see what books I might have read and enjoyed in the mystery and thriller genres (because I just can't stretch to horror or true crime--unless you consider art heist stories true crime books) so I can play along in the spirit of October. And if there are other major cowards out there, you might find something here you're willing to try too. More hard core fans of being scared should hold in their giggles as they read my admittedly lightweight list; these may not be scary or deliciously spooky to you but they are good reads so I have no qualms about recommending them even to you creeper fans.

I do have a bookmark in a book (The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell) right now that claims to be "part classic noir thriller, part fabulist fable" and uses the word "terrifying" at some point in the jacket copy. So you see, I do try to continue to stretch myself even as I also fervently hope this is just so much hyperbole. :-) Do any of you, especially my fellow mystery/thriller avoiders, have any other recommendations for my delicate flower self?

This past week's book travels took me to some very different places. In addition to the one listed above, I witnessed a woman who wrestled with her sense of belonging in faith, a sense that changed drastically when she discovered that her family fled Europe and Judaism just prior to WWII. I survived WWI with two sisters and the family friend who is inextricably tied to them and their family's legacy. And I followed along as a granddaughter kidnapped her terminally ill grandmother to keep her blogger mother from publicly documenting grandma's death. Where have your book travels taken you this past week?

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Southerners are often portrayed in literature and the media as uneducated, bigoted racists. There are some Southern folks who fit into this easily pigeonholed categorization but the reality is often much more complex and nuanced than that, even in the pre-Civil Rights era. Jonathan Odell looks at these complicated racial relationships in small town, 1950s Mississippi in his newly reworked novel, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League, a National Reading Group Month Great Group Read.

Hazel and Vida loathe and distrust each other. They share a terrible similarity, each having lost a son, but they are not friends. Forced together by circumstance, Hazel's husband has hired Vida as their maid after Hazel's drunken accident following the death of her boy, the two women, one white and one black, are wary and resentful of each other. Hazel is from poor white hill people but her husband is forward thinking and successful. No matter how many Lincolns he sells, he can't buy her way into the top echelon of society in Delphi though; she will always be an outcast. Vida is the protected daughter of a black preacher who often acts as the good faith go-between between the black community and the whites with power. But even her daddy's status cannot save Vida from the dangerous and mean Billy Dean Brister, county bully and Sheriff. She is still a powerless black woman who must work for a white family to earn a living and must endure the terror and threats of the hateful and racist in the town. As these two women grudgingly spend time together, they come first to a truce and eventually to the complicated relationship that allows them to join together with the other disenfranchised, maids and prostitutes, to expose and resist the evil in town.

Odell is ever mindful of the clear, unwavering racial divide in small Southern towns and he shows the varying types of racism that abide therein: unconscious, entrenched and courtly, institutionalized, and rabid and volatile. He also touches on class and the ways that it can contribute to oppression, both as a unifying force and as a divisive one. The characters here are fascinating, even if certain of them are occasionally stereotypical. The events of the novel are firmly set in the historical context of major Civil Rights events, showing that there were movements, small than on a nationwide scale, occurring all over, mirroring and encouraging those well known actions. The pacing was fairly slow and the hard work of Hazel and Vida's changing relationship was mostly passed over but the ideas of segregation, the power of hatred, making a stand, loss, motherhood, and corruption shine throughout all the varied threads of the narrative. The challenge to the racist status quo is well done although it is somewhat troubling that it takes a white woman's involvement to rally the black women's community to action. Odell's novel builds on a wealth of well written Southern novels that go before him, broadening our view of the time without trivializing, sentimentalizing, or demonizing the people and the place as a whole. He shines another light on the bravery and power of the dismissed and repressed to change their (and our) world even in the face of hatred. This is a story to pay attention to.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Amazon says this about the book: Wickedly funny, this totally engaging, richly observed first novel by Hannah Rothschild is a tour de force. Its sweeping narrative and cast of wildly colorful characters takes you behind the scenes of a London auction house, into the secret operations of a powerful art dealer, to a flamboyant eighteenth-century-style dinner party, and into a modest living room in Berlin, among many other unexpected settings.

In The Improbability of Love we meet Annie McDee, thirty-one, who is working as a chef for two rather sinister art dealers. Recovering from the end of a long-term relationship, she is searching in a neglected secondhand shop for a birthday present for her unsuitable new lover. Hidden behind a rubber plant on top of a file cabinet, a grimy painting catches her eye. After spending her meager savings on the picture, Annie prepares an elaborate birthday dinner for two, only to be stood up.

The painting becomes hers, and as it turns out, Annie has stumbled across a lost masterpiece by one of the most important French painters of the eighteenth century. But who painted this masterpiece is not clear at first. Soon Annie finds herself pursued by interested parties who would do anything to possess her picture. For a gloomy, exiled Russian oligarch, an avaricious sheikha, a desperate auctioneer, and an unscrupulous dealer, among others, the painting embodies their greatest hopes and fears. In her search for the painting’s identity, Annie will unwittingly uncover some of the darkest secrets of European history—as well as the possibility of falling in love again.

Irreverent, witty, bittersweet, The Improbability of Love draws an unforgettable portrait of the London art scene, but it is also an exuberant and unexpected journey through life’s highs and lows and the complexities of love and loss.

Monday, October 19, 2015

My two oldest children are only a year apart in school. If I thought it was hard having them close in age as babies, I never even thought about the potential difficulties once they were high schoolers. And yet because doing the college application thing was so much fun last year, we're thrilled to get to do it all over again this year. (Terrible how sarcasm doesn't register very well in writing.) As you might suspect, the college search and application process is not fun in any way, shape, or form. So you could be forgiven for wondering why I'd choose to read a book about a family going through that very same thing. Meg Mitchell Moore's novel, The Admissions, won't help calm any fears you have about the process; in fact, it might amp them up a bit, but it's a fantastic and terrifying representation of a high achieving high school senior, her driven parents, and the younger siblings whose issues are overlooked as they take a backseat to the all important application.

The Hawthorne family looks like they have everything they could ever want. Father Gabe is a partner in a management consulting firm. Mother Nora is a very successful real estate agent in pricey Marin County. Oldest daughter Angela is her class' valedictorian and a phenomenal cross country runner. Middle child Cecily is passionate about Irish dancing. And baby of the family Maya is a pretty happy go lucky second grader. But life isn't everything it seems on the surface and as Angela applies to Harvard, the dream school she's been groomed for since toddlerhood, the cracks in the picture of perfection start to widen. Gabe has a secret at work that the company's newest intern, a predatory piece of work, threatens to expose. Worse, it's a secret he's kept even from Nora. Nora is completely overwhelmed with her job and the girls. A very important listing is about to expire and be pulled from her, she could be held accountable for something that was never disclosed on a multi-million dollar home she sold several years ago, and she's convinced that an accident that happened on her watch, an accident she never told Gabe about, could be the reason that Maya can't read yet. Angela is desperate to hold onto her number one class ranking, stooping to means she'd once never have considered and she can't even begin to imagine what will happen if she doesn't get into Harvard early admission. Cecily's dancing is suddenly slightly off and she's dwelling on some pretty morbid stuff for an elementary school kid. And of course, Maya can't read.

None of the characters have shared their burdens with the others, giving the novel an ever increasing sense of secrets kept, intentional omissions, and little white lies all of which threaten to destroy the characters and this life they've built. Despite the reader knowing or guessing all of the secrets, still the rising tide of guilt and poor decisions slowly and inexorably strangles the reader as the pages turn. Moore has really captured the panic and nausea, the stress and pressure of applying to college. Your heart can't help but go out to the over-achieving Angela who is so focused on the things that she thinks will make her application stand out that she has no time to enjoy herself or be a kid. Everything in her life has to be a means to an end and she can't afford to slip, ever. Every member of this family can feel the tension and stress filling their home with increasing desperation. And that's no way to live. Too wrapped up in their own personal dramas to admit to each other the difficulties they are facing, the terrible choices they've made, or the real future they want, it is still clear that these characters do care for each other and care deeply. Moore's creative use of SAT words throughout Angela's narrative sections helps highlight the way that everything about the college application process and the pressure to perform and know everything pervades the high school senior's entire life. Gabe's fears at work and Nora's out of kilter work home life balance serve to make them incredibly sympathetic and realistic. The story alternates perspectives between all of the Hawthornes except Maya, giving the reader a complete picture of the family that the characters themselves don't have. This makes the difficulties each character faces that much more poignant to a reader who can possibly relate to the underlying motivations of each. The narrative pacing is taut and increases consistently until the end when everything unravels, as it must. After the tension of the bulk of the book, the ending is a bit easy but it is a hopeful antidote to the stress that precedes it. A thoroughly enjoyable cautionary tale about self-imposed pressures consuming us, stealing our joy in life, and making us willing to deviate from who we know ourselves to be (or to not even have the chance to find out who we are), this will make you re-evaluate your life, your goals, and the expectations you place not only on yourself but on those you love.

Thanks to the publisher and Book Sparks PR for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters
Forever Your Earl by Eva Leigh
Speed Kings by Andy Bull
The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore
Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46

Being smack in the middle of college applications for the second year in a row, this one appeals greatly to my sense of schadenfreude but I also really liked Moore's previous book so I am thrilled to get a crack at this one.

Dietland by Sarai Walker came from me because it's next for book club.

One of the Great Group Reads from the WNBA National Reading Group Month list, this one about body image, feminism, discrimination, and the beauty industry really appeals to me.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

This past Monday night, I went to one of my very favorite bookish events of the year. The Charlotte Chapter of the Women's National Book Association has hosted Bibliofeast, a movable feast with authors, for many years now. It's a fantastic event where you get to meet and mingle and chat casually with a whole variety of authors. They come to your table as you're eating and sit and chat with you for ten to fifteen minutes on everything from their current book to their writing life to their personal life. It's friendly and intimate and completely charming and low key. This year, as always, offered up some wonderful authors; some I knew and some I didn't. I enjoyed every last one but one in particular made me think about something I noodle on every now and again. J. Peder Zane, author of Off the Books: On Literature and Culture, has an earlier collection called The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books. He said that whether writers picked the books that influenced them the most, shaped them as writers, had great literary merit, or any number of other nuanced reasonings underlying the lists said a lot about the writers. Of course this inspired me to think about the books that I'd put on such a list. Then I finally read Deb at Readerbuzz's blog post about Tiny Treasures: The Books You Have to Dig to Find. And I thought it might be fun to combine the two concepts: a list of ten books that mean a lot to me which are books that are not well enough known or are perhaps forgotten and shouldn't be. The unifying theme is simply that all are fabulous to me for a variety of reasons. And because I asked Peder if any of the authors he interviewed had cheated and given him a list of more than ten (he said yes), I too will cheat some.

I have, of course, left off quite a few novels that continue to be well-known but that have indisputedly and indelibly shaped me as the reader I am today. But that's okay. No list can possibly be comprehensive and fixed, at least not for me, not as long as I have unread books on my shelves and the means to read them.

Does your list bear any resemblance to mine? (Spoiler: Peder said there was a surprisingly lack of overlap on the 125 authors' lists in his book. And isn't that a marvelous thing?!)

My reading week has been busy and interrupted as usual so my reading travels weren't so extensive as they sometimes are. This past week, I visited scandalous places in Regency England as a notorious rake tried to keep an inquisitive newspaper woman off the scent of his real purpose in life. I witnessed the birth of bobsledding in St. Moritz and watched as an American man, enamoured of speed, came to dominate the sport as it made its debut in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. I suffered the stress and pressure of a California family with a child applying to Harvard. I am still in the early stages of a learning about a man who claims to be able to reanimate the comatose and the father eager for his son to come back to him and I am in the middle of England with two privileged sisters as World War II upends their whole world. Where did your reading travels take you this past week?

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

This novel, with the title Food Whore splashed across the front cover, was probably not the best choice to take with me to curriculum night at the high school to read in between my daughter's teachers' presentations. Then again, I probably already have a reputation amongst other parents and the teachers for being an ornery oddball so this shouldn't have changed much. Despite the flagrantly confrontational title, this food-centric tale was right in the wheelhouse of my favorite reading subjects: food and the food industry, insider info, and writing. Unfortunately, notwithstanding this promising fact, Jessica Tom's debut novel still fell short for me.

Tia Monroe is a young woman just starting off her graduate school career at NYU in Food Studies. She wants to become a food writer and she's hoping to land an internship with Helen Lansky, a cookbook author and renowned food writer herself. In fact, the internship with Helen is Tia's entire short term goal in life. When Tia was in college, she had a brief moment of fame when the piece she wrote about cooking with her grandfather and the recipe for the Dacquoise Drops she developed for him when he was dying received acclaim, earned her a regular food column in the Yale Daily News, and even brought her a compliment from Helen Lansky herself. But life doesn't always go as planned and Tia doesn't get the internship she covets. Instead, she ends up doing her internship as the coat check girl at a famed New York restaurant. While at Madison Park Tavern, Tia re-meets Michael Saltz, the New York Times Restaurant Critic. After she secretly gives him her unvarnished opinion of the restaurant, she is startled to see her words in his review, a review that loses the restaurant two coveted stars. So begins her collaboration with Saltz, who has lost his sense of taste and needs someone with a discerning palate to tell him all he's missing on his plate so that he can continue to review restaurants. Tia has a moment's hesitation when she agrees to keep this partnership secret from even those she loves most, including her long time boyfriend and her parents, but she cannot pass up the chance for this unacknowledged, behind the scenes food writing position.

Frequenting starred restaurants means an overhaul of Tia's wardrobe, a change aided by her new roommate, who seems to have her own secrets. And it also means a change in her relationship with Elliott. She starts breaking dates and generally being unavailable to him, something that doesn't bode well for their future. Her obsession with her position as Saltz's assistant takes over her entire life, even as she sees the havoc his reviews are wreaking in the lives of her new restaurant friends. The headiness and importance of getting to write NYT restaurant reviews, albeit uncredited, means everything to Tia.

Tom has an obvious insider's knowledge of the food industry and restaurants. She really gets the cutthroat world of chefs and critics and has portrayed them well here. But main character Tia, who should be a sympathetic character, just comes off as callous, ridiculously naive, and horrid. Her desire to write trumps her knowledge of what is right and moral and she shows no redeeming characteristics to balance that. She has little to no remorse about writing an undeserved hatchet job, cheating on her boyfriend, or lying in a review to award unearned stars to another chef. The story lines with Tia and her roommates could have been interesting but they really just piddled out. There should be a dollop of intrigue here with all of the secrets just screaming to be uncovered and yet the narrative tension is low and the reader spends more time appalled by Tia's remorse-free choices than rooting for her to end up doing the right thing. There are a few descriptions of the meals Tia eats but the bulk of the novel is really about other things. And although the title might put some people off, the tale is about Tia prostituting her services as a food connoisseur and writer rather than about anything risque. A competently written novel with a good inside view of the foodie world this wasn't quite all I'd hoped but other food fiction lovers might want to give it a try.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of the book to review

Amazon says this about the book: For the Marshalls, laughter is the best medicine. Especially when combined with alcohol, pain pills, excessive cursing, sexual escapades, actual medicine, and more alcohol.

Meet Dan Marshall. 25, good job, great girlfriend, and living the dream life in sunny Los Angeles without a care in the world. Until his mother calls. And he ignores it, as you usually do when Mom calls. Then she calls again. And again.

Dan thought things were going great at home. But it turns out his mom's cancer, which she had battled throughout his childhood with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush, is back. And to add insult to injury, his loving father has been diagnosed with ALS.

Sayonara L.A., Dan is headed home to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Never has there been a more reluctant family reunion: His older sister is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. His younger brother comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. His next younger sister, a sullen teenager, is a rebel with a cause. And his baby sister - through it all - can only think about her beloved dance troop. Dan returns to shouting matches at the dinner table, old flames knocking at the door, and a speech device programmed to help his father communicate that is as crude as the rest of them. But they put their petty differences aside and form Team Terminal, battling their parents' illnesses as best they can, when not otherwise distracted by the chaos that follows them wherever they go. Not even the family cats escape unscathed.

As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that the further you stretch the ties that bind, the tighter they hold you together.

Monday, October 12, 2015

It's been a busy week this past week. I had to compile the high school newsletter, an endeavor that takes a good 12-15 hours. I also decided that with my husband out of town all week, it was the perfect time to paint our bedroom and bathroom. I painted the bathroom and then decided that the color didn't quite work. Time I will never get back. Then I painted the bedroom and discovered that I am never painting a room that requires a serious ladder again. This is why there are professional painters. At least I like the color. Then I repainted the bathroom. It's boring but done. After that, I drove to pick the college boy up and bring him home for a family wedding. Then I had to return him to college. It's no wonder that I had so little reading and reviewing time this past week! This week promises to be a busy one too so we'll see how the book front fares. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46
The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
Speed Kings by Andy Bull

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Food Whore by Jessica Tom
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens
Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

Allende is an amazing author but in case I needed more incentive to read this, the story of a young woman who first falls in love with the Japanese son of her aunt and uncle's gardener on the cusp of WWII promises to completely captivate me.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Monday, October 5, 2015

We went to Parents' Weekend at the oldest child's college this weekend. (I still can't believe I have a child old enough to be in college!) Since this weekend was also cold and rainy thanks to Hurricane Joaquin, we spent a lot of time just sitting around with the boy. That meant a lot of reading. I didn't take my computer though so no reviewing. And yes, the to be reviewed list is even scarier than before. I do consider sitting and reading next to a person to be quality time but somehow, sitting and poking at a computer beside someone is not. Don't ask my rationale. That's just the way it is inside my brain. I asked on Facebook for people to help me decide what to review next and I'll ask you all to weigh in too. Help me settle on a few books so I can start working my way through this appalling list! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Slightly Foxed, The Real Reader's Quarterly #46
The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell
We That Are Left by Clare Clark
The Last Season by Stuart Stevens

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League by Jonathan Odell
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Migratory Animals by Mary Helen Specht
Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
Girl in Glass by Deanna Fei
Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capo Crucet
The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories by Wendy J. Fox
The Door by Magda Szabo
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Landfall by Ellen Urbani
This Must Be the Place by Kate Racculia
Henna House by Nomi Eve
Love Maps by Eliza Factor
Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy Reichert
Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fishbowl by Bradley Somer
The Woman in the Photograph by Dana Gynther
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Baker's Apprentice by Judith Ryan Hendricks
X Marks the Scot by Victoria Roberts
Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County by Amy Hill Hearth
On the Rocks by Erin Duffy
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
The Bees by Laline Paull
A Peach of a Pair by Kim Boykin
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Sea Keeper's Daughter by Lisa Wingate
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
My Unsentimental Education by Debra Monroe
Food Whore by Jessica Tom
Minerva by M.C. Beaton
What Is Visible by Kimberly Elkins
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Two Dogs and a Parrot by Joan Chittister

Reading about the worst will keep my own children safe, right? That is why I choose to sometimes read books like this one where a family living abroad for a year stumbles into a nightmare: their young son is kidnapped before they return home. This should be an edge of your seat, sick to your stomach, can't put it down kind of read.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

About Me

A voracious reader, fledgling runner, and full time kiddie chauffeur.
If anyone out there wants to send me books for review (oh please don't fro me in that briar patch!), you can contact me at whitreidsmama (at) yahoo (dot) com. If you do write me there, put the blog name in the subject line or I'm liable to send the unread message to spam. My book review policy can be found here.